Last year, I reviewed Gerald Kersh's "Karmesin and the Meter" (1937), alternatively published as "Karmesin, Swindler" and "Karmesin and the Big Frost," which Brian Skupin listed in Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019) and the description of the impossible crime sounded interesting – a "continual supply of gas to an apartment" while "there is never any money in the locked and sealed meter." The story turned out to be a very enjoyable locked room mystery in miniature devised by a self-professed master criminal, Karmesin.
Karmesin is an immense, purple-faced old man with a "vast Nietzsche moustache, light brown with tobacco-smoke, which lay beneath his nose like a hibernating squirrel" and his "air of shattered magnificence." The premise of the series is Karmesin telling Kersh about his countless criminal exploits. Some of his tall tales beggar belief, which is why Kersh can't decide whether Karmesin is "the greatest criminal, or the greatest liar of his time." A kind of sleight-of-mind intended to leave Kersh and the reader, "it must be a lie... or was it?"
The first story in the series, simply titled "Karmesin," originally appeared on May 9, 1936, in the Evening Standard and has Karmesin bragging to Kersh he has committed perfect crimes, because he has never been "so obliging as to knock cigar-ash all over the floor" or "to trample on the dower-beds with peculiar boots" – only gracefully admitting he once made "a slight miscalculation." Kersh points out that "the crime couldn't have been perfect," but Karmesin disagrees and pulls out an old passbook, dated 1910, which has a credit balance of over three thousand pounds. Karmesin continues to tell about the swindle he perpetrated with that passbook all those decades ago and how he could have made miscalculation without ruining the crime. A good, fun little introductory story, but the scheme sounded familiar. I've read about variations on it before. Just can't remember where.
The second story is "Karmesin and the Meter," but I'm skipping it here since I've already read and reviewed it (click on the link above). Needless to say, it's really good and fun locked room mystery.
"Karmesin and Human Vanity," originally published in the 1938 Spring issue of Courier, in which Karmesin explains to Kersh that "greatest blockhead on earth is the clever man who thinks himself cleverer." To illustrate the point he tells about the time he swindled a hundred thousand francs from a dangerous, well-known and clever crook. Medved was a slippery customer and there's "no dirty business with which he had not soiled his hands." Karmesin got him with that age-old motto of the conman: get someone greedy who wants something for nothing and then give him nothing for something. Another thoroughly entertaining, shortish short story, but Medved was not half as clever (for a hardened criminal) as he was presented by falling for such an obviously staged scam.
The next story, "Karmesin and the Tailor's Dummy," was first published in the Autumn 1938 issue of Courier and has the old rogue telling about his time as a young lawyer in Paris. But not one who kept to the letter of the law. Kersh gets to hear how he helped a young, impoverished bank clerk rob his employer, packed him off the America and kept the authorities off his back – while pocketing some of the change. Just another day in the life of Karmesin.
"Karmesin and the Big Flea' originally appeared in the Winter 1938/39 issue of Courier and has Kersh hearing the story of how Karmesin was once caught in a web of blackmail, which concerned corrupt policemen blackmailing a highly placed politician – even among the blackmailers there were attempts to blackmail each other. One foolishly tried to blackmail Karmesin. So he had to turn the tables on them. Just like "Karmesin and Human Vanity," this story is more enjoyable for its storytelling than the gimmick Karmesin employed.
Next up is "Karmesin and the Raving Lunatic," published for the first time spring 1939 issue of Courier, in which Karmesin gives an account of the Betzendorfer affair. At the time, Karmesin was in Vienna, Austria, to unburden a jeweler of a twenty thousand pound diamond bracelet and a five thousand pound emerald. But he does not fiddle around with locks or burglar alarms. Karmesin goes to work like a confidence trickster to have the items simply handed over them, but there's something very mean-spirited about what he did to that jeweler. However, this is one of the stories in this volume that feels like it could have been one of Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin stories. I liked it.
"Karmesin and the Unbeliever" was originally published in the Summer 1939 issue of Courier and one of the two stories collected here that I hate with a passion. Karmesin lectures Kersh that there are two kinds of ass, "one believes all he hears" and "the other believes nothing," which is the category he assigns to Kersh. So tells him a story about an unbeliever he once met on a cliff and it turns out to be a somewhat conventional ghost story. Karmesin telling a ghost story to tease Kersh as revenge for him writing down and publishing his exploits would have been just fine, but then he tells how he went into business with the ghost! Even worse, Henry the Ghost appears in a second story. The whole point of the series is to leave you in doubt whether Karmesin is "either the greatest criminal or the greatest liar the world has ever known." Or, at the very least, is grossly exaggerating his criminal career. Henry the Ghost ruins all of that and breaks immersion.
"Inscrutable Providence" was first published in the December 24, 1944, publication of The People and has Karmesin, who disapproves of murder, he once had murder on his mind, but the prospected victim, Skobeleff, "richly deserved to die" – a criminal of the worst kind. A vile blackmailer who targeted women and Karmesin decide to help a distressed woman get back an incriminating letter. And to put a permanent stop to Skobeleff. But it's not by Karmesin's hand that he meets his end. Karmesin observers, "such men are always punished in the end" as "Nemesis is always upon them. They are never more than one jump ahead of a terrible vengeance. It is not for man to kill: only for God." This story is basically Kersh's take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" (collected in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1905). A very good take at that!
Sadly, the same can't be said about the next story, "Karmesin and the Invisible Millionaire," originally published in the Winter 1945 issue of Courier. Henry the Ghost returns to assist Karmesin in getting the titular millionaire out of a locked bathroom unseen. This is easily one of the worst short impossible crime stories I ever come across.
"Karmesin and the Gorgeous Robes" was first published in the May 1946 issue of Courier and tries, not wholly unsuccessfully, to repeat "Inscrutable Providence." Karmesin tells when he traveled to Rouen, France, in 1907 to rob the safe of an extremely rich, downright evil antique dealer, Potdevin – who dealt in women and had an interest in numerous houses of ill-repute. The way into his safe and safely out of his antique shop rests on a cloak of incomparable splendor ("stupendous waterfall of jeweled silk"), which is put to magnificent use to stage a robbery with the unwitting assistance of the law. Very clever! But providence, "like a haggard Nemesis," has the final, brutal say in the case. One of the better stories in the series!
The next story, "Chickenfeed for Karmesin," originally appeared in the December 1946 issue of Courier and has Karmesin getting angry at Kersh ("you... species of camel") over wanting to give him a paltry sum as a commission. Kersh has sold an account of Kersh's exploits to a magazine, but Karmesin has only consented to work on commission once. A commission that involved an unnamed, illustrious man on a mission from a foreign government to buy weapons, but this person had lost part of the money in a Monte Carlo casino. Karmesin was commissioned to fix the whole mess. But did he? A decent, rogue-ish tale, but nothing outstanding.
"The Thief Who Played Thiel" appeared in the Saturday Evening Post on February 13, 1954, which surprisingly turned out to be a quasi-locked room mystery, of sorts, with a historical angle. When the poet Edmund Spencer died in 1599, "the greatest of his contemporaries wrote poems to throw into his grave." One of those contemporaries was an obscure, now long-forgotten playwrite, William Shakespeare, who dashed a few lines on a scrap of vellum. Something of great value to collectors of rare items and collectibles. Karmesin is hired by such a collector to "walk into Westminster Abbey, open one of the famous graves, rummage in it and walk out undetected." So this part of the story reads like an inverted locked room mystery and, on a whole, a pretty straightforward story. Simply a theft of a priceless piece of vellum, but, while the world remains ignorant of the discovery, Karmesin has evidence to offer for its existence. Normally, these lost manuscripts or undiscovered either get destroyed or disappear again. It goes without saying I liked this story.
A note for the curious: a more fine-tuned variation on Karmesin's locked room dodge would turn up decades later in one of Edward D. Hoch's countless impossible crime stories.
"The Conscience of Karmesin" was published in the April 1954 issue of Lilliput and tells the story of the greatest robbery of all time. A robbery Karmesin claims to have masterminded and executed. When another World War loomed on the horizon, Karmesin is approached by an Argentinean cattle millionaire, "King" Tombola, who wants a crown of the King of England to go with his nickname and is willing to fork over millions to possess it – which is easier said than done. Karmesin combines good old breaking-and-entering and a psychological effect to achieve its goal. A psychological blind spot at the time when England tried to see "no Mussolini, heard no Hitler, spoke no Franco," but were very conscience of the I.R.A. While he claims to have succeeded, Karmesin suffered a crisis of conscience that undid the greatest robbery in the annals of British crime. Not a bad story and entertaining as usual, but plundering the jewel room in the Tower of London begged for a much grander, more ingeniously put together plot.
"Karmesin and the Royalties" originally appeared in the January 1956 issue of Courier and is one of the more amusing stories collected here. Kersh asks Karmesin why he never considered writing his life story, but Karmesin says he has already sold his autobiography at the tune of nearly a hundred thousand pounds. Only problem is that it never got published. And nothing was written beyond a synopsis. So how did he pull it off? A scam bordering on banality, but also very amusing coming from Karmesin's echo!
“Skate's Eyeball” was first printed in the April 1960 issue of Argosy (UK) and the first story to be published in the post-Golden Age of the genre. Karmesin tells Kersh about another time he tangled with another dangerous criminal. Carfax "fenced, fiddled, and organized" his way into becoming a millionaire, which he did with absolute ruthlessness. Anyone "who took a shilling off Carfax would be found at ebbtide in the Thames" in "an advanced state of decomposition," but now his organization has met its match in the Department of Inland Revenue. So now he can't touch his money and needs Karmesin to get his capital to the United States. Karmesin sets up a marvelous, hard-to-believe scam (in 1960!) to impoverish and declaw the mob boss. A fun, pulp-style crime story.
"Oalamaoa" was originally published in the December 1960 issue of Playboy and together with "Karmesin and the Meter" the best and strongest entries in the series! Karmesin tells the story of "an impecunious painter," named Molosso, who was "a little like the Dutch hero," Hans van Meegeren. A forger "who painted pictures alleged to be by old Dutch masters with such consummate skill" he "fooled all the German experts" and "got undisclosed millions out of such collectors as the Reichsmarshal Goering." Karmesin was determined to pull a similar stunt with Molosso and a newly discovered picture supposed to be the work of the French artist Paul Gauguin. A picture with several coats of paint which represent the layers of Karmesin's scheme, which he uses to play several collectors of each other while pocketing large sums of their money. This is precisely what I hope to find when turning to these charming rogues and gentlemen thieves!
Finally, "The Karmesin Affair" appeared in the Saturday Evening Post on December 15, 1954, which ends the series with Karmesin telling Kersh how he once helped out an old friend in the sale of his beloved library. Sir Massey Joyce is stone broke as practically all he possesses is either mortgaged or entailed, which in addition to taxes and up keep left him completely broke. So now he's forced to clean out his library and asked Karmesin to act as his representative, but getting some good money for the obscure volumes is going to be difficult. Sir Massey was not looking forward to dealing with the Society for the Clarification of History, "heritage busters and tradition wreckers," whose "great ambition is to prove beyond doubt that Francis Bacon wrote the works of William Shakespeare." Karmesin sees an opportunity to save his friend's beloved library, get the money and get one over those snooty Baconians. So a very simple case of forgery and, plot-wise, nothing really special, but a nice story to both close out the collection and end the series.
So, on a whole, Karmesin: The World's Greatest Criminal—Or Most Outrageous Liar has the usual mix of good, bad and average stories with a few standouts on both sides of the spectrum. I thought the two stories featuring Henry the Ghost were not only prosperously bad, but detrimental to the series as they undermined the whole premise of the series. On the other side, you have "Karmesin and the Meter" and "Oalamaoa," which were so good that even an excellent stories like "Inscrutable Providence," "Karmesin and the Gorgeous Robes" and "The Thief Who Played Thiel" look average in comparison. The rest of the stories are good to average and usually pretty entertaining, but not always memorable. When I began writing this review, I noticed some of the stories had already blended together in my memory and needed to go back to check which was which. Not the best collection of stories to recommend to the traditional, puzzle-oriented mystery reader unless they also happen to have a fondness for classical rogue fiction.